As usually, in ambiguous historical situations, a
problem appears inevitably; pretenders and mythomaniacs of any kind. The tragic end of the
Dauphin Louis XVII which was imprisoned and died in the
'Tour du temple' in Paris
during French Revolution had his Naundorff, Hervagault and others numerous pretenders.So, the tragic and mysterious end of Romanov in 1917 had everything to attract a lot of
pretenders taking advantage of the credulity of relatives believing in a possible
survival. So, in 1919, Pierre Gilliard unmasked in Omsk a young man
called Alexei Poutziato who
claimed he was
Alexei.After this first case, pretenders will be strangely numerous
(more than 200 distinct one) ! So, in this page, I tried to present the history of
some of them.